I've been rewatching classic Who to exercise the Who muscles. Saw a massive trailer at the cinema the other day for a special screening of Who, it looks pretty much the same as the last season except bigger of course.

It's Babelcolour doing profiles of some of the people who were nearly cast as The Doctor, and they splice in actual roles with footage from the show to make it appear as if these were actual alternate timeline Doctor Who episodes!

Re: Day of the Doctor, in 2015, Toxxupation posted:

Most clearly and most effectively, though, "Day" could've used either the Silurians or the Gangers as the antagonist for "Day". The nice thing about using either choice is that, one, they've already been presented as sympathetically, and two, both antagonist races have compromise as an essential tenet of their previous appearances on Who. The Silurian two-parter was goddamn loving awful, but I would argue that the appeal and persistence of Vastra means that Silurians can be written well and sympathetically, it's just that Chibnall utterly loving failed at doing so. The Gangers should go without saying, but in both cases if the episode builds to a head where the Silurians or the Gangers are shown to be established as being explicitly mistreated by the humans- think of some sort of apartheid analogy or something - which causes the Silurians/Gangers to resort to some extreme, terrorist-level measure leading into a confrontation in the UNIT basement, then the compromise solution lands more thoroughly because both parties are adequately aggrieved over what we get in "Day", where the Zygons are total dicks but get placated anyways.

So with season 10 only a few days away AND being Moffat's final season, I thought it might be fun to go back and look at the first episode of his first season. I've written about The Eleventh Hour before (and posted about it a million times) but not in any great depth. And it is one of my favorite episodes of the revival, and still the episode I encourage new viewers to watch as an introduction. Does it hold up 7 years later though? For me, absolutely it does. Yeah some of the CGI is a little dated now (though nothing close to how horrible Rose now looks) and with the benefit of hindsight you can see any number of potential plot threads/ideas that never quite went anywhere or got pulled off as they should have. Plus we get out first clear look at some of the repeating elements familiar to much of Moffat's Who output, present before but largely masked by being contained and isolated within the RTD era. But it's still an absolute blast of an episode with a wonderful fairytale atmosphere, amazing chemistry between Matt Smith and Karen Gillan (and Caitlin Blackwood of course), the satisfaction of the logical and genuinely clever solution that the Doctor comes up with to catch Prisoner Zero, and of course the way the elements of that solution are actually seeded throughout the episode so it doesn't just come out of nowhere. As a reaction/response to the RTD era it still feels like a breath of fresh air, but most importantly it does what it sets out to do brilliantly, it introduces the world properly to the 11th Doctor.

http://i.imgur.com/3OuG4t7.gifv
The opening is the only really sour note for me in the episode, though I do like to think of it as a kind of exorcising of the last remnants of the RTD era. Not that the RTD era was a bad thing, but Moffat had a clean slate - new Doctor, new companions, new showrunner etc - and it was time to stamp a new identity down on the show. A big plus to this was the shift to HD, the show immediately looks 1000 times better than it did during the first 4 seasons which in turn makes it stand out. The old console set wasn't really fit for HD transmission which was as good an excuse as any to replace it, which also helps to largely remove the TARDIS from the story outside of when it is used to screw things up. So we open with the TARDIS spiraling out of control, burning up from the release of excess regeneration energy the 10th Doctor was trying to hold back to put off his regeneration as long as possible. The next Doctor barely avoids crotching himself in a broad bit of "comedy" and continues blasting over the London night sky towards the small village of Leadworth, where he crashes into a shed just as young Amelia Pond is praying to Santa to fix the crack in her wall.

The Doctor posted:

Oh, that's a brilliant name. Amelia Pond. Like a name in a fairy tale.

The fairytale atmosphere is deliberate and extremely welcome. The EleventhRaggedy Doctor is like something out of Dr. Suess or Roald Dahl, a somewhat chaotic and not entirely safe figure who barrels into the life of a little girl and brightens her day while also teetering constantly on the edge of disaster as he offers well-intentioned but somewhat destructive assistance for problems that may or may not be entirely in her head. The casting of Caitlin Blackwood is inspired, not just because she's genuinely a good actor but because she is related to Karen Gillan, and so - especially with the benefit of hindsight - you can almost see the grown Amy in her face, you can see the same traits Amy has in an incomplete form. Like the Cat in the Hat, the Doctor talks nonsense to Amelia that she takes with a grain of salt but also with childish credulity. There's a swimming pool AND a library inside his smoking blue box AND an engine(s!), he coughs up glowing energy, and he's absolutely starving and determined that SHE be a good host and feed him, leading to some fantastic editing as he tries and rejects multiple "favorite" foods as he tries to get to grips with his new tastebuds. This serves multiple purposes, outside of the whimsy and the development of the Doctor and Amelia's relationship, it's a clever and fun way to introduce a new audience to the idea that the Doctor has changed bodies and that he himself isn't entirely sure what is really going on/who he is and what he likes.

A running theme throughout this episode is that part of the Doctor's post-regeneration issues had his mind still working as fast and efficiently as ever.... but he wasn't quite able to keep up with it. Connections were being made, conclusions drawn, factors accounted for etc... but he has to actually stop to think (with some strain) about what he's already figured out. There's a fine line to walk here as the Doctor has to simultaneously incredibly smart AND incredibly stupid, but one aspect I really dug was that this Doctor's emphasis appeared to be more on empathy and emotional availability. As Amelia tells him her own little story and he regales her with the fascination that is his own life, he hasn't missed the important details - she is a brave and determined little girl who doesn't shake easily and whose mind is open to the bizarre... which means he takes it seriously when she says she is scared of the crack in her wall. It's a silly and childish thing to be scared of, but the Doctor in only a few minutes has grasped that Amelia isn't the type to be scared of the same things that might frighten other children, and he's more than willing to take on face value the notion that maybe there is something scary in what seems to be a mundane thing. What he finds, of course, is the first "Crack", a recurring theme throughout this season, a hole in time and space as the universe is/was/will be torn to pieces by a future event involving "the Doctor in his TARDIS". At this point all we know about it is that it's there, and the Doctor himself assumes it was created by Prisoner Zero when it escaped the Atraxi. The seeds are sown in his later conversation with Zero for the events that will transpire across the rest of the season, but the Crack passes that important test of working both within a season-long arc AND the vacuum of a single episode. It's creepy and it's mundane, it's taken something normal and making it terrifying. In other words, it'll scare kids and please the ghost of Robert Holmes, which is really all you can ask from Doctor Who. It's a great strength of the episode as it creates this underlying sense of unease beneath the surface fun of the fairytale atmosphere, probably best encapsulated in those moments where the Doctor and later Amy look out the corner of their eyes and find the room that has ALWAYS been in the house and never noticed, hiding in plain sight - the usual made unusual, the normal made abnormal.

http://i.imgur.com/u2wyUxb.gifv
With the Crack closed and with the knowledge that Prisoner Zero came through it, he Doctor departs just as he was about to figure it all out, distracted by the TARDIS engines risking phasing, meaning he had to take a quick hop through time/space to clear everything up. He promises little Amelia (whose story about living alone with her Aunt already isn't quite adding up) that he will be back in 5 minutes, assuring her that unlike "people" he keeps his word, and he will take her on an adventure when he returns. He departs in his TARDIS and shes rushes to pack her bags to wait for him.... and wait, and wait and wait and wait. The Doctor returns as promised, only to find it's now daytime and things seem to have changed. He's more concerned by having caught up with his own mind at last though and figured out what Prisoner Zero is - but Amelia is nowhere to be seen, replaced by a cricket bat that knocks him out (complete with cartoonish tweeting noises that will return a few times during Moffat's run), and he wakes to find himself handcuffed to a radiator while a leggy redheaded woman in a police uniform calls in for back-up. Baffled by this turn of events, the Doctor and the police officer encounter Prisoner Zero, are threatened with the burning down of the "house" (actually the entire planet) by Zero's warders The Atraxi, and escape outside where the Doctor becomes fascinated by the presence of a replacement shed for the one his TARDIS crashed into. Why? Because it's close to a decade old but he was only gone 6 months (intended to be 5 minutes), at which point the fake police officer (She's a kissagram who needed an official looking uniform to intimidate the strange man who broke into the house) reveals what everybody else figured out long before the Doctor - she's Amelia Pond, and he's been gone 10 years.

It's to the credit of the writing and the casting and the actors that after spending so much time establishing a rapport between Matt Smith and Caitlin Blackwood, they actually pull off having the rest of the episode (and the next 2.5 seasons) with Karen Gillan playing an older version of Amelia. The two immediately spark off each other, Amy Pond is a marvelous character and the slow unraveling of her initial official no-nonsense attitude to demonstrate she's actually an incredibly stubborn and even somewhat scary village eccentric. Everybody knows her (and hilariously, her longstanding imaginary friend "the Raggedy Doctor") and are very slightly nervous just to be around her. We later find out this is partly due to an unconscious reaction to her entire life being a paradoxical tangle, but I prefer the idea that she's just naturally like this as well. Bursting into people's houses, using a man's cardoor to trap the Doctor, arguing with everything and refusing to be dismissed or treated as a prop during the Doctor's triumphant inspirational speech - Amy establishes herself strongly and immediately stands out beyond just being a(n extraordinarily) pretty face.

Rory is there too, feeling like a(n important) supporting character with no real sense that he would be anything more than a semi-recurring character at best (he is Amy's "boyfriend", a fact she seems eager to downplay). But there's already established somewhat of the character he would grow into, or at least the potential for it. He is the one who spots the coma patients walking around the village, perhaps his exposure to Amy having opened his eyes to seeing things everybody else misses or ignores, and despite his utter terror he is there every step of the way with Amy as they rush headfirst into danger to try and track down Prisoner Zero. There are a couple of false starts though, the casting of Annette Crosbie in such a small role seemed certain to be the sign of another recurring character ala Jackie Tyler or Francine Jones, as well as her handsome, tall and muscular grandson Jeff (which leads to a rather funny pornography joke) but both are never seen again.

The Doctor's plan to capture Prisoner Zero is inspired, and all these years later it's easy to forget that for a very long period of time before this episode aired, there was a tendency for the Doctor's plans in the Revival to involve some sudden bit of technobabble or introduction of new information to resolve the issue. Here, Prisoner Zero's abilities and limitations are established, the stakes are set, the set-up for the resolution is introduced and everything comes together in a mostly tidy package that feels earned. The Doctor builds a computer virus that resets all the clocks and electronic devices in the world to output zero, and makes sure the Atraxi are able to trace the source back to the phone he used to code it. That brings the Atraxi to within spitting distance of Prisoner Zero, and then he uses the photos Rory took of the coma patients to upload them to the Atraxi and give them a photo of every single form Prisoner Zero can take. Even Prisoner Zero's own back alley escape route has been established, it was made clear it needed months of exposure to make the connection with the mind of another being and then take their form, and it's had a decade with Amy. Then the Doctor's own solution is just as well established, he grasps that the mental connection can work both ways and he can still communicate with the now unconscious Amy, and turns Zero's transforming ability against itself by making it do an absolutely perfect impersonation... of itself. The Atraxi seemingly teleport it away despite it being well established they were coming to kill it and then depart the Earth... and the Doctor immediately calls them back.

This is one of the more "controversial" sections of the episode for want of a better word. Even at this point there was already fatigue with the notion of the Doctor making a big speech and scaring off aliens with his own legend. It was used to great effect in the Library 2-parter as a bluff against the Vashta Nerada, but it's use in this episode already raised concerns about Moffat going back to the same playbook - a critique that would follow him through to the current day. I'd argue that within context of the season long arc it makes a ton of sense to include this speech in this episode, but an episode needs to be able to stand on its own as well. I'd still argue that it does, that the Doctor's speech here works primarily because this episode is the start of a new era for Doctor Who but also as a reminder of what has gone before and an introduction to new viewers of who this character is. The Atraxi almost committed an unimaginable crime in order to capture and kill Prisoner Zero, and they did it because they thought they could get away with it. So he's here to warn them and any others (and inform us the audience) that Earth is protected, that it has been going back to his first body and this 11th (that we knew of at the time) is that same person. "Basically... run" is a line that may or may not work for you, but Matt Smith's delivery gets me every time. Helped by the fact it's the first time we see him in HIS costume, the last ragged remnants of (the beloved) David Tennant are gone and this new actor stands in his place, but he IS the Doctor.

The Doctor returns in a rush to the TARDIS when his key heats up to indicate it has finished its internal repairs. Departing for a quick trip to break her in, he leaves Amy behind as she struggles to catch up to him, but he returns later that night to fulfill his promise. In a wonderful moment that would become familiar over the next few years, Amy undercuts the Doctor just as he is getting a little too full of himself (as all good companions should) by explaining that the events with the Atraxi and Prisoner Zero happened.... 2 years ago. It's been 12 years she has been waiting for him to fulfill his "back in five minutes" promise. So better late than never, he introduces her to the TARDIS and we get our first sight of the brand new console room, and I still think it's a wonderful and pretty thing even if it is a bit full on with the "whimsy". But that was the look they wanted, the feel they wanted to capture - this Doctor and his relationship with Amy Pond was a fairytale, he was something straight out of her imagination or a storybook. The Raggedy Doctor, something wonderful and impossible and ridiculous and mad... but very real. Amelia changed her name to Amy because she grew up and fairytales are for children, but the Doctor happily promises to "fix" her of that condition. She takes her first look at the inside of the TARDIS and gasps that even in spite of all the craziness she's been through with him, she never quite believed it was all real until she saw this. She thought he was just a "madman" with a box. The Doctor's final line back to her is a fantastic capper as well as somewhat of a statement of who and what the 11th Doctor would be over the next three seasons.

The Doctor posted:

Amy Pond, there's something you'd better understand about me, because it's important, and one day your life may depend on it. I am definitely a madman with a box.

So better late than never, he introduces her to the TARDIS and we get our first sight of the brand new console room, and I still think it's a wonderful and pretty thing even if it is a bit full on with the "whimsy".

I think as much as I like the current console room, Matt Smith's first one may be my all time favorite. It's a shame they had the production difficulties with it and had to change it out.

The two worst episodes of DW ever, that goddamn embarrassment of a Zygon two-parter in Series Nine.

I know a lot of people love _that_ speech, (not here, obviously) but I honestly think it's a ridiculous rejection of everything I think Doctor Who is or represents. There's the occasional surface flicker of something that sounds like it could make sense, but actually it's completely horrible.

Okay, how about learning that when Tom, Lalla, and Graham Crowden went and saw "Alien" in theaters, halfway during the film, Tom shouted "Why don't they just go down into the cargo hold and bore the alien to death!"

Okay, how about learning that when Tom, Lalla, and Graham Crowden went and saw "Alien" in theaters, halfway during the film, Tom shouted "Why don't they just go down into the cargo hold and bore the alien to death!"

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

I'm trying to think of a story where the Doctor is up against a non-intelligent(?) creature like the xenomorph. What would he even do? I just get this mental picture of the 7th Doctor being "how do you do, I'm the Doct-" as it chomps into his head.

I'm trying to think of a story where the Doctor is up against a non-intelligent(?) creature like the xenomorph. What would he even do? I just get this mental picture of the 7th Doctor being "how do you do, I'm the Doct-" as it chomps into his head.

That's the trick.

He wouldn't be able to do a drat thing. The Doctor needs to be able to fight something he can be clever at, otherwise he's just a normal dude who has to deal with it the normal way. If it's something he can't be clever at, like a Xenomorph, he's really kind of out of options beyond just being competent.

"The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

That was my line of reasoning, too. I imagine him coming up with the 'take off and nuke the entire site from orbit' plan.

I imagine such a story would have him trapped on a space station or something like that without access to the TARDIS and he would probably have to rig things up so he could lure the creature into some kind of deep-freeze chamber or trick it into an escape pod and shoot it into space.

I know a lot of people love _that_ speech, (not here, obviously) but I honestly think it's a ridiculous rejection of everything I think Doctor Who is or represents. There's the occasional surface flicker of something that sounds like it could make sense, but actually it's completely horrible.

I'm trying to think of a story where the Doctor is up against a non-intelligent(?) creature like the xenomorph. What would he even do? I just get this mental picture of the 7th Doctor being "how do you do, I'm the Doct-" as it chomps into his head.

C"mon guys, the correct answer is always "When I say 'run,' run. Run!" There's tons of examples in the series, even if they're not the main threat and were released by the intelligent bad guys or the Master.

I'm trying to think of a story where the Doctor is up against a non-intelligent(?) creature like the xenomorph. What would he even do? I just get this mental picture of the 7th Doctor being "how do you do, I'm the Doct-" as it chomps into his head.

This pretty much happened in Vincent And The Doctor, although the invisible creature was blind and maybe semi-sentient. It pretty much wrecked him even after he built his silly look-at-a-thing mirror device and trapped it in a church. They only survived by accidentally luring it into attacking them in a panic and impaling itself.

He who fights shitposters should see to it that he himself does not become a shitposter. And if you gaze for long into an anidavatar, the anidavatar gazes also into you.

It's happened a few times that I can think of. Kroll is just a massive wild animal, the ultimate threat in Inferno is a natural disaster, and there is no intelligence at work behind Kill the Moon or The Forest of the Night.

It's happened a few times that I can think of. Kroll is just a massive wild animal, the ultimate threat in Inferno is a natural disaster, and there is no intelligence at work behind Kill the Moon or The Forest of the Night.